The Thursday Book Beat: Amazon’s Head Honcho Says Books Are Too Expensive

In this write up by Business Insider, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is essentially saying that books aren’t necessarily expensive in regards to an individual being unable to afford a $30 or even $20 due to their socioeconomic position. Why would he say that when we have libraries that help alleviate that issue? What he’s saying is that books aren’t competing with other books but instead a $30 book is competing with a free mobile game app like Candy Crush. Due to this, books should be less expensive to compete with other free content.

“If you realize that you’re really competing against ‘Candy Crush,’ you’d say, ‘Gosh, maybe we should think about reducing friction on long form reading. That’s what Kindle has been about from the very beginning.”

This is a ridiculous notion to me because good business doesn’t just mean offering consumers the better price for a product but also telling consumers the worth of the product giving it the price it deserves. Let’s have a conversation about improving a writer’s take home income from a published book rather than have another conversation on why their work should be priced less. People use eBooks like the Kindle for the paperless option more so than the cost of reading which is reflected in the stats that say that people are still buying print books along with the eBook alternative. Try again, Bezos.

2014 Goodreads Choice Awards Were Revealed

Were Were Liars by E. Lockhart won Best YA Fiction and I reviewed the book here on the site. It’s a great read and I suggest you check it out. Congrats to everyone on the list for their win!